Percy Bysshe Shelley 1792-1822

Percy Bysshe Shelley was born in Horsham, Sussex the son of a Whig landowner. He was educated at Eton and Oxford, from
which he was sent down in 1811 for writing a pamphlet on atheism. This, together with his elopement with and marriage
to the sixteen year-old Harriet Westbrook in the same year, caused an irreparable breach with his family.

Shelley later abandoned Harriet for Mary Wollstonecraft, whom he married after Harriet's suicide. Shelley's latter years were spent
in the company of other literary and political exiles in Italy, where he enjoyed a greater freedom to express his
revolutionary ideas. He drowned at sea in the Bay of Spezia.

Shelley is without doubt one of the great Romantic poets who, in spite of his turbulent and colourful life, produced
works which are full of passion, creative energy, and lyrical beauty.